On Any Sunday, The Next Chapter

On Any Sunday, The Next Chapter (2014)

Director

You might have heard of the 1971 doc “On Any Sunday,”
produced by avid motorcycle guy Steve McQueen and directed by Bruce Brown,
who’d made his name prior to it with groundbreaking movies about surfing,
particularly 1964’s “The Endless Summer.” But did you know that “Sunday” was
kind of the start of a franchise? “On Any Sunday 2” followed in 1981. In 2000,
Bruce Brown’s son Dana, who has also made his own surfing movie, 2003’s “Step
Into Liquid” (Dana’s also behind some “Summer” sequels, but let’s not get too
confusing), made “On Any Sunday Revisited,” followed by a making-of on the
first picture, “On Any Sunday: Motocross, Malcolm and More,” and now Dana
presents “The Next Chapter.”

Advertisement

My recollection of the first “On Any Sunday” movie is less
of the movie itself than of an impression of the audience that embraced it:
workaday American men who looked at biking as a form of unalienated leisure, an
exhilarating escape. A measure of how the world has changed is given the viewer
in this movie’s opening presentation logos: a welder works on a bike in a
sparkling garage, while a little girl cavorts about; the logo “Red Bull Media
House” manifests itself in 3D, followed by the logo of Freeride Entertainment;
we’re then informed, in this garage, that what follows is “Supported By
Skullcandy.” (Later in the movie, a motorcyclist executes a stunt from a Park
City, Utah, ski jump, and vaults over another Skullcandy logo.) The machines of
escape are now lifestyle appurtenances.

What follows is all handsomely shot and not without some
general interest—but the movie’s only really going to play for you if motorcycles
and those who ride them are subjects to which you’re somewhat sympathetic. Dana
Brown himself supplies the narration, and it’s a welter of sub-MTV style
advertisements for itself; this is a story, Brown announces, “that defies
stereotypes,” which usually means that it rearranges a particular set of
stereotypes to make it seem as if it’s defying stereotypes. I mean, don’t get
me wrong, the stuff about the deaf female motorcyclist Ashley Fiolek is
interesting and somewhat touching, but to this viewer it would have been even
more so had I not been assured about how surprised I was going to be right at
the outset. The classic rock soundtrack choices don’t exactly “defy” anything
themselves, either.

Forgive me: what I really wanted this film to explain are
the (excuse my French) a-holes you find in some urban areas who think it’s
acceptable to rev their machines at ear-splitting volume at stop lights for no
good reason. What’s their story? Do they have any kind of rationale that makes
any kind of sense aside from the conclusion I’ve already made about such
characters? Brown declines to venture into this area. In other respects,
however, he delivers a clean and concise report on The Wide World Of
Motorcycling in the 21st Century, and also delivers some memorable
imagery, particularly at the Bonneville Salt Flats and in Southeast Asia.

Popular Reviews

Subscribe to our mailing list

Enter Your Email Address

Advertisement

The Ebert Club is our hand-picked selection of content for Ebert fans. You will receive a weekly newsletter full of movie-related tidbits, articles, trailers, even the occasional streamable movie. Club members also get access to our members-only section on RogerEbert.com